Today is another patch day for SWTOR, to version 1.0.2d. Again the patch is in the middle of the day for us Europeans, but as most people have gone back to work / school that is less of an issue than it was during the Christmas holidays. But it might be a good opportunity to talk about bugs in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

SWTOR does have bugs, a fact that shouldn't really surprise anybody. I'll give you a description of various bugs I've encountered or have regularly: The most annoying bug I have is that if I log on my alt, who has slicing as a crew skill, and then switch to my main, it messes up the crew skill display of the main. Slicing is then listed as fourth crew skill for my main, and slicing nodes are shown on the mini-map, making finding the bioanalysis nodes harder. But of course the main can't actually use that slicing skill, it is just a display bug. Another bug is that failing a diplomacy mission gives you fractions of light side / dark side points, so the display of those points looks ugly. Another recurring bug I noticed is that on Tatooine certain structures "leak" beams or planes of greenish light.

As you can see, at least me personally I don't have any really significant bugs. There are a lot of small display bugs I'd love to see fixed, but nothing which would stop me from playing the game. But then it appears that different people encounter different bugs, and some bugs are slightly more serious, like messing up your chat. The bug which made you untargetable if you use certain dance emotes is said to have been fixed.

I have noticed display bugs, both with the engine and the UI, the guild panel is still wonky on occasion despite being "fixed" last patch.My main issue is with a quest on Hutta that I can't hand in, I'm nearly 20 levels beyond it but I'll be damned if I abandoning it as it's complete. The loading screen stupidly refers back to that starter quest and the best support could come up with was "reload the ui", because yeah, that will help a ton.

and the funniest one so far, Khem Val glitches out occasionally if he's knocked back or in some way incapacitated (not killed) in a fight. he just lays on a ground and follows my inquisitor by teleporting after her.. still laying on a ground. today in particular, he actually fought.. while still laying on a ground visually :P

I have encountered one bug that pissed me off temporarily.. but now I cannot even remember what it was :/

I've seen the green wall bug several times in both Tatooine and Alderaan. I know that BioWare licensed a 3D engine called HeroEngine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroEngine). Perhaps the 3D engine creators are to blame for the green wall bug and not BioWare?

I seen lots of enemies frozen in midair instead of completing their death animation, and I've seen a couple of reset errors; a force throw no stopping, constantly throwing stones in front of me, and my companion being knocked down then staying down there after the mobs are dead (following me in his lying down position).

I think one of the most amusing bugs I've run into is dead enemies that are still standing, often in a battle pose. I tend to see this most often when they die from a knockback or possibly periodic damage happening while being knocked back. It's probably just a communication glitch where the client doesn't realize it should make them lay down. This isn't the first game I've seen it happen in either, so it mostly just made me smile and move on.

The unharvestable nodes is one of the most frustrating so far. I hate when I've killed my way over to something only to find it's not really there -- especially when that node is in an active area and I keep wanting to harvest it. The other night I had to make a mental list of which nodes were broken in the area and which ones weren't so that I could just focus on the ones that refreshed as I was running missions in this neighborhood of the city.

I also had a glitch on one character where I got an orange crafting recipe, learned it, and then when I went to craft it, the recipe was gone. I submitted a ticket and was told it was forwarded to the bug team and the ticket was closed.

I've also had problems with an extra crew skill showing up, trying to whisper people who are online and being told they're not online or are the wrong faction, companions acting like they want to talk when they don't really, and missions that will not abandon from my log. I've also gotten stuck a few times where my character was "jittering" where I was stuck and so I had to use the "/stuck" to kill myself because fast travel won't work because it considers the jitter to be "you're moving".

All in all, the bugs are not overwhelming for the level of complexity in the Star Wars MMO and the fact that they're only a month out of the gate. I haven't personally run into any game breaking issues yet. Honestly, I'm more upset with the responses I get from customer service than the issues themselves. I expect form letters for a lot of issues. What I don't like is how they've handled some of half dozen or so tickets I've had to open so far. In one ticket they asked for more information, but closed the ticket so that I can't add the answers. In another ticket, I had two related issues and they gave me completely wrong information on why one issue wasn't real and totally ignored the second issue, then closed the ticket.

As an American, I've become used to crappy customer service from every company I deal with. After all, it costs money to deal with customers, so they companies with the lowest bidder. I used to work in the call center world and I know both the how and why of companies are treating their customers like they don't matter. For some reason, I had higher hopes from Bioware and their customer service.

A guildmate has problems with a 2 second delay of abilities in PvP. Pretty annoying for him. There seems to be a huge thread on it on the official forums. Also laggy in flashpoints.

There's also the bug with the guild list that doesn't show all members.

Probably a few others that I don't remember right now, but all in all suprisingly few bugs I think. I'm more annoyed by some of the design choices, like no separate bracket for L50 PvP (or JAG for that matter). The unharvestable nodes was annoying and still is but it was improved with the patch so it's not as bad as before.

I have a guildchat bug in Space Missions. When i leave the mission the chat is wiped clean, so all the chat, which i might want to reread, or which might have been targeted at me is gone when i leave the Spacemission.

-I crash to blue screen about 1 in every 4 times i quit the game. non paged area error or some such. Sent a couple tickets, automated response. I cleaned up registry, boot files, bios, uninstall and reinstall, still persists. I don't use my gaming computer for regular internet access or any productivity, so it has windows and SWTOR on the SSD and maintenance programs on the data disk.

I have been told int he forums it is a known issue for limited circumstances but still no resolution.

The only other bug i've noticed (i tend to gloss over the others in light of the blue screen one) is my Sniper's occasional inability to target something while in natural cover.

@ran93rReset the quest and it should be fixed. Resetting does not mean you have to complete it again but it will refresh the step you are on which is the turn in. I've had this bug before on a hunter class quest.

Have you tried hitting ctrl+u to clear up your ui problems? It hides the ui but it also seems to reload it -- and the audio drivers for some reason -- from scratch. I occasionally get weird UI bugs too and it almost always clears them right up. Plus when your speeder bike suddenly decides to go 'silent mode' it makes it work again too.

Worst bug I've encountered is the "block" bug that affects force users. If we block with our lightsaber we can't attack until the block animation is finished, and sometimes we block several times in a row.